Heading Home- Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois

Not sure if anyone's still reading,  but in case you're wondering what happened on the rest of our trip...


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Tuesday August 2 and Wednesday August 3rd

Kiva (on the left) and Tanner

Leaving Castaway Monday Morning, Nate and I headed to Woodbury, Minnesota, just outside St. Paul to visit my Uncle Rick and Aunt Denise Gigante.  We don't get to see them very often due to the distance and when we do see them it's usually for a wedding or some other major event when we don't have much time to visit.  It was so nice to just sit down for dinner (deliciously home cooked of course!) and talk without having to rush to some event.  It was great catching up, hearing stories of my grandparents and Dad when he was younger.  Nate also loved playing with their two dogs Kiva and Tanner!

On Wednesday, Uncle Rick took the day off work and after enjoying yummy breakfast on their patio, we headed to downtown Stillwater for lunch and spent the afternoon on an old paddle boat on the St. Croix river.  Again we lucked out with a gorgeous day, although it may have been a little hot we still made the best of it.

On the St. Croix River Trip - Wish we had a photo with Rick & Denise!

Thursday August 4- Monday August 8th

On Thursday morning after another breakfast and some more chatting with Aunt Denise, we packed up and headed towards Minocqua, Wisconsin for a long weekend with Nate's family at their grandparent's cabin.

We had the evening to ourselves and celebrated our 2nd Anniversary early at a supper club.  The 5 courses of food were awesome.

Nate's Uncle Paul, Aunt Pam and cousins, Mandy, Nicki and Nat arrived in the evening with his sister Renee and Jason (who was her boyfriend at the time and is now her fiance) arriving soon after.  Nate's Dad and Cindy arrived the next afternoon and we all spent the weekend fishing, boating, water skiing, tubing, playing games, and enjoying the beautiful Wisconsin sunsets.

Some highlights were the mosquitos and spiders attacking us on the island, jumping off the rope swing, Jason catching his first fish and celebrating our 2nd anniversary!

Gorgeous

Jason caught his first fish!

So fun!

All of us!

 Saturday night we were all getting ready for bed when Nate disappeared suddenly,  I thought he just ran to get something, but when a few minutes went by and I heard whispering, I went to check on him. Turns out he had reached into his duffle bag looking for his toothbrush and when he pulled his hand out he caught his pinky on his razor and cut a chunk out of his finger!

Kinda gross, but he was a man about it - no surprise!  And this was the first actual injury of our whole trip.  Of course it would happen at the very end, but luckily it was not major and with a bit of bandaging and a few days of healing it would be as good as new!

Happy 2nd Anniversary to us August 7th! and the last night of our epic trip!!

Monday August 8th we packed up headed back to Illinois to move into our new townhouse in Oswego, IL.  We couldn't believe that we'd been on the road for 2 months!  It was the longest trip from Champaign, IL to Oswego that we possibly could have made!
Looking back at all of the places we went, the people we visited and the adventures we had, we are so thankful.   We couldn't have asked for better weather throughout the trip or safer travels.  It was such a blessing that we'll be talking about for the rest of our lives.

 Since then, Nate's started his job at Caterpillar and he even had training to drive some of the many giant machines!  We've settled into our townhouse and spent a ton of time with our kitty Hayleigh.  I'm still hoping for a job, but waiting for God's guidance.

If you're still reading, thanks for listening and I hope you've enjoyed hearing all about our trip!

Theodore Roosevelt National Park and Castaway

Saturday July 30th- Continued


Leaving Glacier National Park, we knew we had a whole day of driving ahead of us and we wanted to get as far East as we could.  Looking on our handy dandy National Park Iphone App as well as our trusty atlas, we found that Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota was about the perfect distance away and on our way to Minnesota where we would be heading next.  A perfect destination.


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Driving through Montana as we left Glacier was sort of sad.  Not only were we heading back east knowing that our trip was almost done, but the mountains that we love were slowly growing smaller with each passing mile.  The land goes from mountains to rolling hills to flatish rolling plains.  By the time we passed into North Dakota we knew we had left all of the interesting topography behind us.

That is until we finally made it into Theodore Roosevelt National Park.  The park is actually part of the Badlands and filled with weird gorges covered in scrub trees and bushes.  Kind of like a baby grand canyon, except, not nearly as deep-obviously- and greenish instead of red and brown.

We found our campsite easily and while Nate walked to go pay our site deposit, I started to hear a strange clicking noise.  As I peered down the camp road, I noticed two wild horses just walking down the road.  They turned at the bathrooms and came straight for our campsite, just grazing as they went.  As you can see from the picture, this was just as Nate was getting back.  What a weird sight to have wild horses just a few feet from us.  We knew they were wild by their lack of horse shoes and mangy hair.

Wild Horses grazing right by our campsite!!

With relatively not that much to see in TRNP(coming from Glacier as we did), except scrub trees and ground hogs(and wild horses), we made camp and ate dinner while we waited to head to the ranger program.  Unlike some of the other national parks we'd been to where only some people go to the ranger talks, it seemed like the whole camp came out for the program.  We listened to the ranger talk about Teddy Roosevelt and his time ranching on this land.  Believe it or not, there's lots of interesting stuff that you don't get in your high school history class.   Imagine that!


Sunday July 31st- 
Before we left the park and continued on our way, we stopped at the visitor center and went on a ranger tour of the Theodore Roosevelt's Maltese Cross Cabin. It was the cabin that he had built and lived in during his time as a rancher in the 1880's.   

Theodore Roosevelt National Park - Badlands

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By lunch time, we were on the road again, this time driving all the way to Castaway, a YoungLife camp in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota where I have led as a leader twice.  I really wanted to show Nate what YoungLife camp was all about.  He had been a leader for 6 years, but unfortunately never made it to camp so it was great for him to finally experience it.  We met up with our friend Liz Fay, a former Champaign Younglife leader who was working as a volunteer Work Crew Boss for a month, to watch the evening's activity: the crazy obstacle course!  Although we made it to YL camp, we actually had pitched our tent for the night at a nearby campground and slept through our first thunderstorm of the entire trip!

Monday August 1st - 
In the morning, we packed up our tent in the rain, enjoyed the hot showers and then headed back to Castaway for the day.  We checked in as official Adult Guests.  YoungLife has an Adult Guest program, where parents, friends, potential donors, or anyone interested in the way YL camp works can stay in a beautiful house at any of the camps and watch camp happen.  If you're there for the whole week you get to see the session progress as kids are introduced to Christ, loved by their leaders, and hopefully accept Christ as their Savior, all while enjoying the little piece of heaven which is camp.  In addition to watching the kids, adult guests also get to participate in some of the camp fun, including parasailing, hot tubbing, rock climbing, banana boating and a slew of other camp activities.

I loved showing Nate around camp and we enjoyed banana boating with the other adult guests, most of whom were our parents' ages.  We also spent a lot of time catching up with a few of the Champaign leaders who were volunteer workers on Summer Staff for the month.  Katie Samuelson and Kelli VanderPal were working in the Sea Breeze, which is the snack shop by the beach, while Connor Feeney was helping rescue kids who didn't know how to sail at the boat launch.   It was fun watching them work and seeing how God was changing their lives as well as using them to serve the high schoolers at camp.   They even took us to their "house" for a special Summer Staff/Work Crew club and worship time.  Both Nate and I were wishing that we had spent a summer serving on Summer Staff enjoying the community and the intimacy of the group.

Outside the Adult Guest Lodge

Enjoying Camp!

Glacier National Park

Thursday July 28th - Continued
After our delicious breakfast(in a restaurant - a rare treat!), we were fully awake and ready to explore Glacier.  During the summer the main road cutting through the park, the  "Going-to-the-Sun-Road", is relatively free of snow and open for sightseers.  The road actually opened on July 13th this year, a record late opening due to all the snow they had.  We started on the road near the West Glacier Entrance in the morning and made lots of stops along the way to take in the beauty of the park.  We would have loved to do some day hikes, but our itinerary (and our tired bodies) just didn't allow it.  


Our first stops were along Lake McDonald.  Though it doesn't look that impressive on this map, keep in mind that that red line you see is actually 53 miles long.  Needless to say, it's all on a pretty grand scale.  

The park is actually called Glacier National Park due to the Glacial lakes, not due to the several glaciers  that have yet to melt on the peaks.  The park rangers did mention that the few glaciers that are left are melting so fast that they might all be gone in the next 10 years.  We were so glad to see a little bit of them before they're all gone! We also lucked out with a clear blue sky all day.  Glacier is truly the most beautiful of all the places we traveled to and other worldly in that it's pristineness.(if that were a word, it would fit Glacier perfectly)

Lake McDonald- Crystal Clear!

 The road also follows a snow fed creek most of the way on the West side.  We stopped several times  to marvel at the turquoise, clear water.

Feeling the cold water!

Avalanche ruins along the road.

As we continued higher up the road, the views of the majestic mountains just kept getting better.  The greens were really that green and the blue sky was really that blue.  It's hard to describe just how beautiful it is there.

Another snow fed creek 

The "Going-to-the-Sun-Road" was built in 1933 and with heavy snow fall each winter, it is damaged annually and in need of repair.  With the summer being the only time the road is open, the tourists and construction workers have to share the time on the road.  As a result, there were some sections of the road that were only open to traffic in one direction at a time.  Despite the inconvenience of waiting for traffic, we enjoyed the stop time to take pictures, and take in the beauty slowly.  

They were working on the road with Caterpillar equipment!

The line along the bottom third of the photo is the road.  They tried to make it blend into the scenery as best they could.  

By lunch time we made our way across the whole road in order to find a campsite at the Rising Sun Campground.  We found a decent site, set up camp and I immediately went to sleep for a while.  The sickness, bad sleep from sleeping in the car the night before and the early morning had taken their toll and all I wanted to do was sleep.  A few hours later I woke up and found Nate hiding in the car reading and trying to avoid the wind that had picked up in our campsite.  We anchored everything down and then made our way back up the road to take in some more views.  We sat with the binoculars trying to spot wildlife, as well as view the glacier better.   We also stopped to see the Sunrift Gorge and catch the view of St. Mary's Lake, another crystal clear glacier formed lake.

A view of Jackson Glacier off in the peaks.

A crooked picture taken by a stranger in front of St. Mary's Lake.

The Sunrift Gorge

What a view!

We parked the car along the road when Nate spotted a small lake hidden behind the trees.  Unfortunately, I fell asleep again, but Nate took the time to fish.  He caught a......

Cut-throat trout

 With all my sleeping, we were afraid I might have had a fever, but couldn't find the thermometer that I had packed.  We ended up driving all the way out of the park past St. Mary's visitor center trying to find either a thermometer or phone service to try to call someone.  We eventually found a thermometer at a small Indian Shop, as the park is on an Indian Reservation.  No fever which was good and we were able to call Castaway to move our Adult Guest Reservation up a few days.  With me being sick and us both tired, we decided to cancel our trip to The Grand Tetons the next day and spend another day resting in Glacier instead.  It worked out perfectly.

On the Going to the Sun Road near St. Mary's Visitor Center

In the evening, we waited several hours (that's not a typo) at the Rising Sun Campground for hot showers - the first in 3 days!!  There was one shower stall for each gender, and that was intended to serve the whole eastern half of the park.  All clean, we made spaghetti for dinner and headed to bed early listening to the sounds of someone singing tribal songs at the ranger talk.  

Friday July 29th-

The next morning we slept in as late as we could, made a good breakfast and went through the day relaxing.  We enjoyed having the gift shop so close as we managed to find a game we had played with Danielle Nesbitt, one of my college roommates, called Moose Farkle.  We had loved the game the first time we played so we couldn't pass the chance to pick up a fun souvenir.  Unfortunately, the wind picked up again in the afternoon so we stacked all of our bins (and some that we found in the food locker) on the table as a wind blocker and played for a while.   

Playing Moose Farkle and hiding from the wind. 

In the evening, we headed back to the gift shop, this time for some ice cream sandwiches as a treat!
With the ice cream melting in hand, we headed to a lookout to watch the sunset over St. Mary's Lake. The view was incredible to say the least. 

The sunset at St. Mary's Lake- Tiny Goose Island in the middle of the lake.

Nate wanted to go fishing again and this time, since I wasn't sleeping and was feeling much better, I tagged along.

He caught another one!

  At dusk, we made our way to some of the creeks for some night photography.  The low light allowed us to get some interesting shots with the moving water.  We're newbies and it's no moonbow, but it was still a lot of fun.

Saturday July 30th - 
With another long day of traveling ahead of us, I got up early so I could have a hot shower without the wait!  Not knowing when my next shower would be, it was so great to be clean!  Plus the hot water was refreshing after the chill in the air.  Most of the summer and most of the places we went to were hot, or at least warm, but Glacier felt like it was already fall.  It was in the 50's at night and just barely reached 70 degrees during the day.  We'll be nice and call it 'refreshing'.

All clean, we packed up the tent  and stopped one last time at St. Mary's Lake.  Again the sky was crystal clear and the water still as glass.   It could not have been any more perfect.  We'd love to go back and spend some time actually hiking while we're healthy in Glacier.  I would recommend the trip to anyone.  It's definitely worth it!

Our favorite shot from Glacier - You might see it on our wall when you come visit...